Comparing General Relativity books

[Elnur Hajiyev]

Hello. I have 2 books in General Relativity: MTW Gravitation and Bernard Schutz First Course in General Relativity. I studied Calculus I, II, and have a basic understanding of Linear Algebra(did not studied extensively). I want to learn about GR as much as possible, and improve myself to become at least semi-professional on the topic, on the other hand I do not have enough time to read a big book such as MTW right know read Schutz. Just want to know what will I miss if I learn GR from Schutz instead of MTW Track-1 and is it sufficient to be good in GR as a graduate student?

P.S. MTW Track-1 topics is outlined gray in the book.
P.P.S. I am willing to spend time to learn GR, but I am not Physics student to spend all my time to solely Physics, so I would not prefer to spend much time to learn the same thing just with more examples and explanations, while I can spend less time to read and much time to think about the topics I read and figure out what is going on in my head. So I would know if the differences between the books are really such kind of.
I am sorry, if my language is as bad as not to be understood, but hope my question is clear. I appreciate your answers.

 

[bcrowell]

Amazon let's me see the table of contents of Schutz, and it looks like a pretty complete introduction. The size of MTW is absurd; it contains a huge amount of material that you don't need in order to achieve your goal. BTW, Carroll is a good modern alternative to the standard graduate texts such as MTW and Wald, and there is a partial version online that is free: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March01/Carroll3/Carroll_contents.html

 

[Elnur Hajiyev]

Amazon let's me see the table of contents of Schutz, and it looks like a pretty complete introduction. The size of MTW is absurd; it contains a huge amount of material that you don't need in order to achieve your goal. BTW, Carroll is a good modern alternative to the standard graduate texts such as MTW and Wald, and there is a partial version online that is free: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March01/Carroll3/Carroll_contents.html

Yes, contents cover all concepts that need to learn GR. But I am not sure how much will I learn at the end of the book and what will I miss if I don't read, for example, from Carroll?

Thanks, in advance.